Neurosis in the workplace

Response to Letter from Dr. Mark Awerbuch in Relation to the Article: “Stigmatization of Patients with Chronic Pain: The Negation of Empathy.” Cohen ML, Quintner JL, Buchanan DA, Nielsen M, Guy L. Pain Med 2011;12:1637–43

“…Clinicians need to be very careful when attempting to attribute the lived experience of pain to a mental (psychological) disorder. In fact, such diagnoses at that time rested upon the dangerous assumption that the clinical phenomena could and never would be explained in terms of neurobiology [5]. This is no longer the case for many of our patients [6].…”

One-Eyed Science: Scientists, Workplace Reproductive Hazards, and the Right to Work

“…Strikingly, DBCP was outlawed in the United States shortly after; I can think of no workplace chemical that has been outlawed because of its effects on pregnancy. 5 This and other demonstrations that men's reproduction could be affected by the workplace made it appear more unjust to exclude fertile women from jobs. As a pioneer researcher in male reproduction put it in 1986, "While the major focus continues to be on women and the fetus, events in the 1970s triggered a new interest in potential reproductive effects on the male" (57, p. 375; 58).…”

The Workers' Compensation System in Victoria: Who Takes the Blame?

“…The complex phenomenon of 'RSI' has generated an extraordinary polarisation of attitudes centred very much around the question of whether it is a compensable 'disease' or not (for example, see Lucire 1986, Valencia 1986, and National Occupational Health and Safety Commission 1985. If health care and compensation issues become the focus of political concern then it is inevitable that the long-standing tensions between employer and employees will be expressed in terms of these issues rather than in a more appropriate arena.…”

“…If health care and compensation issues become the focus of political concern then it is inevitable that the long-standing tensions between employer and employees will be expressed in terms of these issues rather than in a more appropriate arena. The complex phenomenon of 'RSI' has generated an extraordinary polarisation of attitudes centred very much around the question of whether it is a compensable 'disease' or not (for example, see Lucire 1986, Valencia 1986, and National Occupational Health and Safety Commission 1985. Yet it is increasingly being recognised that 'medical' and 'social' issues often cannot be distinguished.…”